The ASB officers rolled out the basket— filled with a variety of colored ping pong balls. The room that had been blaring with screams suddenly faded into mute whispers, the air becoming tenser and tenser with every passing second. As Principal April Scott walked over, a thousand piercing eyes stared at her, praying for luck. And as her fingers grasped the ping pong ball, the fate of the winners was sealed.

Would it be the seniors, who had won every rally this year thus far?
Or would it be the sophomores, who wanted redemption from their fourth place loss at homecoming?
It could have been the freshman, who had taken the third place spot from the sophomores back in October.

It was none of those. As as she lifted up the golden colored ball, cheers and celebrations erupted from the sea of yellow shirts.

That is the nature of a lottery.

Despite losing the rally games and the poster contest, the class of 2018 pulled through. Despite two and a half years of coming 4th, 3rd or 2nd, the juniors pulled through. On Feb. 3, the juniors won a rally for the first time. It didn’t matter if they still had the second most points.

But for Class of 2018 Secretary Stacy Park, the ball that came out certainly was a surprise. She, along with many other juniors, initially thought that the ball was white.

“Our poster was falling apart and we didn’t have time to fix it so they were like ‘everything has to get off the floor’ so we just put it up and it was falling apart and ripping. Our cheers didn’t really work out, we got fourth place for every category,” she said.

Bull Spirit Commissioner Junior Kevin Tong agreed.

“We only knew a miracle can solve our issues,” Tong said.

Afterwards, a wave of shock and confusion swept the junior class. As they had never won a rally before, they had no idea what to do.

“Also we never ran up because we never won a rally so it was our first time doing that we were a little confused,” Tong said. “At the end it turned out pretty well. Just keep it in our hearts, and help it motivate us for the next one.”

Class of 2018 president Juliane Tsai recounted the feeling of excitement after winning the rally.

“It was the best feeling in the world cause we won, like we never won a rally before and we put a lot work into this rally,” Tsai said. “At the end we pulled it together—actually no, we just got lucky I guess.”

Class officers like Tsai worked very hard this rally week to show what 2018 is made of.

Many juniors like Aparna Manoj also celebrated alongside the class officers.

“I thought we would win because it would be funny,” Manoj said. “Cause like I didn’t think we would actually win so when she picked up and said that it was juniors it just seemed really funny.”

Although funny may be one way to describe how some juniors thought about the win, others like Tong, Park and Tsai described this win as a long-awaited feeling that they’ve been craving since freshmen year. And finally, they got to feel this a few months earlier than they would have.

“For me, I don’t think we should let it get to our heads too much because it was a force of chance,” Tong said. “I think we need to focus on the parts that we were unable to accomplish and to focus on the final parts of the rally.”